A lot of times when we cover big business news in the billions on T-minus, that money tends to be not just US focused, but also specifically to or from SpaceX. And we're not saying some mystery, 1.8 billion dollar investor in Florida is SpaceX, but we're also not saying that. What are our big billions for today? Coming in hot from Europe. Today is December 16th, 2024. I'm Maria Varmausis and this is T-minus. Europe signs the IR squared contract with Space Rise, an unnamed company plans to spend 1.8 billion dollars in capital improvements at Cape Canaveral. This pushes for Starbase to be incorporated as a city in Texas. And our guest today is my friend and colleague from the Cyberwire Daily, host Dave Bittner. Dave has recently secured his friend in amateur or ham radio and he'll be telling us all about his plans with his new hobby. And we're kicking off today's Intel briefing with some big contract updates that, yep, run in the billions. We're starting in Europe where the Space Rise consortium has signed an agreement with the European Commission and the European Space Agency to design, deliver and operate the infrastructure for the resilience, interconnectivity and security by satellite project for a period of 12 years. The program, better known as Iris Squared, will be led by the Space Rise group, which includes UTELSAT, Hispasat and SES. The Iris Squared constellation will form a network of 290 new low-Earth orbit and medium-Earth orbit satellites. The program is an EU flagship initiative to develop satellites for a resilient, interconnected and secure Europe. Iris Squared is expected to be the preferred and trusted network for Europe, delivering secure and reliable high-performance communication solutions to the EU and its member states, as well as high-speed broadband connectivity for European citizens, governmental authorities and businesses. The EU says it'll play a transformative role in reinforcing Europe's digital sovereignty and low-latency connectivity. The project will be backed by 6.5 billion euros of public funds, representing nearly 60% of the total project costs, with private financing from the Space Rise consortium members making up the rest of the 10.5 billion euro estimated cost. Iris Squared is expected to provide services by the beginning of 2030. Is SpaceX, Blue Origin or some other mystery space giant about to expand in Florida? Local officials are keeping mum on the company that plans to drop a cool $1.8 billion in capital investments at Cape Canaveral. The unidentified company is also expected to bring 600 new jobs to the Cape with this development, which will include a high-volume production facility and high bay and launch infrastructure for the Heavy Lift rocket hardware. The proposal, which has the codename Project Hinton, is expected to enable rapid manufacturing, assembly and integration of heavy lift flight hardware and significantly increase the volume and mass of payload to orbit from Florida. The Space Florida Board of Directors is expected to discuss the proposed construction during a special meeting later this week. And speaking of SpaceX, the company has sent a letter to officials in Texas to request that Starbase be incorporated as a city. Catherine Looters, the general manager of Starbase, wrote a letter to the county stating that, "To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That's why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley." Cameron County Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. responded, "Sharing legal and elections administration will review the petition and see whether or not it complied with all the statutory requirements and then we'll go from there." The first official Tronche 3 opportunity is live. The Space Development Agency released a request for proposals for the Tronche 3 program integration, known as the T3PI effort of the proliferated warfighter space architecture. Through this RFP, SDA seeks systems engineering and integration activities to support the T3 program, which will extend the PWSA through the acquisition and integration of the next generation of hundreds of space vehicles and associated ground segments. Multiple vendors will deliver the sets of space vehicles that comprise each of the T3 transport layer, T3 tracking layer, and T3 custody layer, and multiple vendors are expected to contribute to the evolution of the PWSA ground segment to drive T3SV integration test and mission operations. The T3 program integration contractor will be primarily responsible for the integration of T3 systems elements to ensure interoperability within the operational PWSA. Proposals, if you're interested, must be submitted by noon Eastern time January 31st, 2025. In another action to streamline and bring additional clarity to the application process for a commercial space launch and reentry license, the Federal Aviation Administration has determined that various flight safety analyses performed by the Federal Ranges in California, Florida, and Virginia satisfy requirements of the Part 450 rule. The commercial space industry often cites meeting flight safety analysis requirements as a challenge in the Part 450 licensing process, including when an operator contracts with a Federal range to perform some of the work. In consultation with each Federal range, the FAA has now specifically listed which safety-related Part 450 provisions, if performed by the range, satisfy the rule. This provides clarity to the applicant on what work by the range is acceptable to the FAA and reduces the amount of material that the applicant must submit and improves the efficiency of the FAA technical review. Part 450 license applicants can make immediate use of this new process. An advisory circular will be issued in the near term to provide additional information. The FAA is continuing to work with the Federal Ranges and anticipates expanding the list of safety-related services done by each range that will satisfy the Part 450 rule. Millennium Space Systems, a Boeing company, has named Tony Gingis as Chief Executive Officer, effective December 9. According to the press release, Gingis has more than 30 years of experience in executive leadership, operations, design, and production across commercial, civil, defense, and national security space. He previously held pivotal roles within Terran Orbital, Virgin Orbit, and Airbus One Web Satellites. Loft Orbital will fly four hyperspectral sensors for Australian company Esper in upcoming missions. The two companies announced the collaboration agreement late last week. The sensors are the first of Esper's four-leaf clover constellation, which aims to support critical monitoring applications worldwide. Under this agreement, Loft will integrate and operate the hyperspectral sensors onboard the upcoming Yet Another Mission satellites beginning in 2026. China is gearing up to launch its new Long March 8 rocket from its first commercial spaceport. The Long March 8 was successfully transferred to the launching area in Wenxiang City of South China's island province of Hainan over the weekend. The vehicle was developed by the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology under the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation. Cask says it uses green and environmentally friendly liquid propellant. China is expected to determine when the vehicle will launch in the coming days. That concludes today's briefing on this Monday. Head to the selected reading section of our show notes for more information on all the stories mentioned throughout the show. We've also included a NASA contract award announcement for administrative support services. Hey T-Minus Crew, if you would like daily updates from us directly in your LinkedIn feed, be sure to follow the official N2K T-Minus page over on LinkedIn. And if you're more interested in the lighter side of what we do here, we are @T-MinusDaily on Instagram. That's where we post videos and pictures from events, excursions and even some behind-the-scenes treats. Links are in the show notes. Hope you'll join us there. Our guest today is my friend and colleague, Cyberwire Daily host, Dave Bittner. Dave recently received his amateur or ham radio license, and I started by asking Dave to tell me a little bit about his history with amateur radio and what drew him to get his license. Growing up as a kid, I was very much interested in electronics. I was one of those kids who took everything apart and put it back together and hoped that I didn't have any screws left over or that it would still work when I put it back together. I had a Radio Shack 150 in one kit, which I absolutely loved. And one of the things you could build in there was a radio, which I did. I loved walkie-talkies. All that kind of stuff just captured my imagination. So time passed and when I went off to college, I moved into my dorm and the first day I moved in, I moved in before my roommate who had already been living in the dorm room that we shared. And sitting on his desk was this very fancy looking radio device that had dozens of knobs. There was a cable coming up the back of it and hanging from the ceiling of our dorm room was this antenna that looked like a bunch of coat hangers put together in a position. Kind of like a dousing rod. Some inscrutable thing in the dorm room. Yeah. Yeah, but I figured, all right, we're probably going to get along just fine. And we did. So it turns out my roommate was president of the Ham Radio Club at the University of Maryland. So during my time there, I was Ham adjacent and met a lot of the people in the club and spent some time up in the club Radio Shack. I climbed the tower once, which was pretty cool. Oh, nice. Yeah. So, and you have to also remember that this was before the time when everybody was carrying a mobile device. So we did not have cell phones back then either. So this idea that you had this communication device between you and your friends was really, it was a great utility. So back then, of course, my roommate kept telling me, you got to get your license. You got to get your license. And back then part of the requirement was Morse Code. And I really wasn't interested in Morse Code. Yeah. Yeah. You had to know that to pass the exam. That's right. Yeah. So sometime after I graduated and I graduated college in the very early nineties, the FCC dropped the Morse Code requirement for Ham radio licenses and they kind of tidied up the levels of licenses. I think previously there were five levels and now there are only three. And then a few months ago, when I saw the stories coming out of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene and the type of things that the amateur radio operators had been doing there, it really inspired me to take another look at it. And I thought to myself, this is something that I think I could do. And maybe someday I'd like to be in the position where if my community needed it or my family needed it, I might be able to be helpful. So I started looking into it, studied for the test online. There are many online exams you can take. And I used one that was basically like flashcards. And you have a lot of the knowledge going into it, right? I mean, you sort of already, yeah, you did. Yeah. So my experience with electronics, my experience previously with broadcasting and broadcast engineering, I would say I definitely had above average knowledge of all that kind of stuff. But the first time I went in and took the practice test, I scored about a 65%. And I think you need either 70 or 75% to pass the test. So I just worked on it for a few weeks, an hour here, an hour there, until I got myself up to 95% on the practice test. And then I found a local club that was giving the exam on Saturday morning at the craft room in a local church. And I went and there were probably a dozen people there taking the exam with me. And it was a 35 question multiple choice test. And I passed. And a few days later got my call sign from the FCC. And it was very exciting. So I'm happy to do it. Okay. So what is your call sign? If you don't mind sharing? My call sign is KD3ABO or as we in the ham club say Kilo Delta 3, Alpha Bravo Oscar. So there you go, Ams. Go find him. That's right. I think what's so interesting to me about amateur radio is there's almost like a romance to it. And I don't mean that in a weird way. I mean, that sort of what you just mentioned about how we can be useful to our communities, especially even now in this age of we all have cell phones and there's the internet. People often wonder what is the point of having a, you know, the ability to talk over radio. And what you just mentioned and also just the idea of, you know, these radio waves, you know, the radio allocation exists for use by general citizens. It's there for us. And it seems a shame almost not to use it when that's actually been set aside for amateur use. I'm just curious philosophically when people ask you the same question aside from, you know, utility, what your thoughts are on, you know, access to radio, that kind of thing. Well, first of all, I think part of what attracted me to it was that it is very polite and very organized. You know, there are rules of the road, rules of the airwaves. There are protocols. And I think that's important in a world where discourse has gotten harsher and coarser to have a place where you can go and people are semi formal and polite and courteous. There's something attractive about that. But I agree. One of the really fun things when you get your first amateur radio is that you start tuning in and you just you hear all this stuff. It's always been there, but you never had a way to listen to it, right? The airwaves are full of conversations and all sorts of people. And with amateur radio, you can listen to people literally all over the world. So it's really been quite fun. Yeah. And it's got that intimacy of radio and, you know, as a podcast host, especially that person to person voice connection, but also broadcast because we can all sort of tune in and listen. You must have some aside from just talking to people or listening in, I imagine you've got to have some goals of things you'd love to do, you know, talk to someone on the other side of the world or maybe outside of the world. So curious what you're thinking of trying to achieve. I do. And one of the things that happens as you go down your amateur radio journey is as you go down the pathway of getting the licenses, more radio bands open up to you. So at the moment I'm quite limited. I have the entry level license, which is the technician license. And so there's only one band, the 10 meter, 10 meter band that I'm allowed to use for any sort of distance communications. But as you get the, the, the more stringent licenses, you, you, there are other bands that open up to you, the 20 meter band all the way up to 160 meters. And these are the bands that bounce around up and down off the atmosphere. And you can be talking to people on the other side of the world. So that's exciting. But one of the other things that I have set aside as a goal is I really want to communicate with the ISS. Yeah. I love this. Turns out there, there is an amateur radio capability built into the ISS. And even better than that, turns out my local amateur radio club, one of the members is the person who was responsible for specking out the ham radio equipment that's on the ISS. So I am in the process of seeking that person out without seeming like I'm stalking. It's for podcasts, we promise, sir. Right. And it's, it's, it's one of those magical things because with a handheld radio and the right antenna, you can communicate with the ISS. You, you don't need a big dish, you know, a big satellite dish or anything. You can communicate with the ISS. So as a kid growing up, you know, with Apollo and the space shuttle and all those things that, that, that techno optimism, you know, what a, what a magical thing to be able to communicate with a, with a spacecraft and an astronaut from your backyard. We'll be right back. Welcome back. December 24th being Christmas Eve and the day before the start of Ponica, lots of folks have plans traveling to see family, maybe spending time at a party, exchanging gifts, blazing towards the sun at record breaking speeds. Okay. That last one's NASA's Parker solar probe on the 24th. The solar probe will swoop within 3.8 million miles of the sun's surface at a blistering 430,000 miles per hour, smashing its own records for speed and proximity to our local star launched in 2018. The Parker solar probe is no bigger than a small car and its whole mission since launch has been to reach out and touch some sun. Using a series of gravity assists around Venus, Parker has been swooping by the sun closer and closer with each orbit with its latest brush with soul. It'll dive through solar plasma and even slice through an active solar eruption, a beloved science fiction trope that's going to be real in this case with Parker surfing the sun's wildest waves. Doesn't hurt that our sun is in its solar maximum, its most chaotic phase of an 11 year cycle of activity. So, scientists are bracing for a treasure trove of data about solar flares and the sun's fiery dynamics. Mission control won't hear from Parker during the closest approach, but we'll check in before and after to confirm its health. If all goes well with Parker's solar surfing and it's not too singed from the whole affair, fresh images of our sun could arrive by the new year with detailed science data to follow. For the Parker solar team, it'll be a happy new year indeed. That is it for T-minus for December 16th, 2024, brought to you by N2K Cyberwire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes at space.n2k.com. We would love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and short review on your podcast app. Also, please fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space@n2k.com. We're privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies. N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment, your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your teams smarter. Learn how at n2k.com. This episode was produced by Alice Carruth. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iben. Our executive editor is Brandon Karpf. Simone Petrella is our president, Peter Kilpie is our publisher, and I'm your host, Maria Varmazes. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow. . [Music] [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
